ABSTRACT
One afternoon in the early 1970s, I was boiling a kettle for tea. The teapot (those were the days when tea leaves went into the pot rather than teabags) was waiting open-topped on the kitchen surface. At that moment, the cat-a very noisy Burmese-turned up at the nearby kitchen door, howling to be fed. I have to confess I was slightly nervous of this cat and his needs tended to get priority. I opened a tin of cat food, dug in a spoon and dolloped a large spoonful of cat food into the teapot. I did not put tea leaves in the cat’s bowl. It was an asymmetrical behavioural spoonerism.
